There is sometimes more than you are expecting
by shadow-walker12
Summary: After Henry has solved another monster case, ending up in a discussion with Vicki, he decides to allow him some relaxation vampire style. But sometimes a bad mood is not the thing, one should get started with, when someone has a bone to pick with sb from the past. Rated M for reason! Some hard stuff in the chapters. Part of a series that is loosely tied together.
1. Chapter 1

**There´s sometimes more than you´re expecting **

**Disclaimer: **All characters belong to Tanya Huff and the writers of the show Blood Ties. I´m only writing for entertainment and I don´t make any money with it! No copyright infringement intended.

Rating: **Rated M** for reason. You have to be at least 16 years old. Content not suitable for children and teens below age 16. hurt/comfort, Angst, drama, some coarse language

_A follow up to _Myxine- What the hell is that?_ The story takes place shortly after Heart of Fire and after the hunt down of a monster fish that unfortunately had left his normal area to reap the peaceful, snow covered Toronto and lake shores. After Henry had a rather unsuccessfully discussion with a hardheaded Vicki, he needs some sort of relaxation from the pressing events of the last time, in order to get his mind grounded again. So he decides to allow himself some entertainment vampire style..._

_This is about to become part of a series, that is loosely tied together and takes place during season one and two of Blood Ties._

_**Chapter 1**_

**Looks like...**

Henry let his look glide over the young woman from the side and his fingers were playing with a strand of her dark brown hair that was lying on the backrest. Soft as silk, not unequal to his own curls but of darker color. Her fine lined lips and her gentle eyes were reminding him of an Italian woman, whom he had known and loved a long time ago; Ginevra.

And whom he had lost...

Loss was hurting. Always. Also after such a long time. And the discussion with Vicki tonight had anyway torn open old wounds, he had believed to be healed. Henry himself wasn´t sure anymore why he was lamenting. Maybe it was because of the events of the last time. He had only scarcely escaped death, the physical traces of it had been healing with the usual speed and enough blood. But sometimes, shortly before sunrise when he was lying alone in his bed and waiting for his daytime sleep to come, he meant to feel the glowing hot clasp of the golden Illuminacion around his heart...as if it was still there. The pain and the icy stranglehold of glowing metal, that had clung to his heart, making every heartbeat, every intake of breath a fight against the clasp of approaching death.

Then with an iron will he was forcing himself to lock that up into a mental safe, turning it into only being an image of memory, that would be sealed in the deepest and hindmost corner of his brain.

_I have to get away from it! I definitely need some distraction!_

And this young woman at his side, Tonia, seemed to be the right one to share the rest of the night with him. He might drive home with her later...

Vicki and Mike were still in his condo. Since they had saved him from that dungeon, the detective was one of these few authorized persons, who were allowed to enter his refuge, his sanctuary. He would simply complement them off. Over and out. Or _adesso basta_ as Mike used to call it. Vicki was used to it. She had already met him when he had a guest, allowing himself a snack. No problem for him.

"Henry...?!" she whispered and her eyes were looking over his pale features. "Henry? What is...?" Tonia was shifting a bit in his arm when she turned so, that she could lift her hand to play with a curly strand of his hair. "Lean back and relax...I can help you to get your head free, Henry..." she whispered in his ear and her breath was grazing over his ear conch, causing a slight tingling under the skin of his temple. Her fingers were gliding in his neck, under the curls.

Henry sighed unintentionally and he shuddered slightly. It was long ago, since a woman had touched him that way. Christina. He was quite aware, that his neck was an especially sensitive zone.

"Relax..." the soft voice whispered.

Henry leaned his head back in his neck and into the touch.

For a fraction of a second he was tempted to act with caution, the caution of a hunter and predator. Forget it! He ordered himself.

What for? Tonight he was tired of things, which didn´t run the way he wanted them to run and now he simply wanted to relax and he urgently needed the distraction. And may it only be to get down so far, that he might fall asleep at sunrise without any gnawing thoughts. Once again to be fed up and sated and plain and simple righteously tired falling into daytime sleep.

Righteously tired!

Henry had to smirk. This expression he had heard when he had watched the movie _Witness_. The story of a detective who had to investigate the murder of a dealer, his only witness was a small Amish boy. Righteously tired:The Amish were calling a condition that way, when one had become tired after work agreeable to God. After day work 18th century style.

For some people it would be good, when they would have to work that hard like the humans in his father´s time, he fleetingly thought, before he was leaning in the touch of these soft fingers again. These fingers which were crawling along his shoulders, slowly moving up his neck to finally work their way up his hairline into the back of his head.

Henry had his eyes closed and he sighed lowly.

He shuddered under these electrifying fingers. His sighs were deepening. Tonia had damn skillful, if not to say, exceptionally gifted hands...

Henry felt her warm breath on his face and he blinked from under his eyelashes. Tonia´s face was hovering right in front of him and her lips were touching his, when she looked at him with her fawn brown eyes. He opened his lips to a slit, feeling something rising deep within him and he felt when he was growing hard. The vampire within was rising to the surface, but he forced that longing back inside him, before his eyes would be turning dark and she would feel the tips of his four fangs. Tonia wasn´t one of his regular donors and this wasn´t the moment to confront her with something, what she could misunderstood., or what could scare her.

Her tongue shoved between his opened lips and her hand crawled in the back of his head.

"Relax, Henry...!" she anyway managed it to mumble under her tongue play.

Her fingers, a nail, slit slightly over his neck, scratching along there. He shoved his hand deeper, to her waist... Some relaxation. Yes. He needed that now. And more. Afterwards...

"Yes...relax, Henry...relax and you will experience things you aren´t aware that they even will be existing..." she whispered. Her tongue was skillfully moving in his mouth, diving deeper. With blunt teeth he fixed her tongue, feeling the tip almost touching his roof of the mouth. In a reflex he fought down the urge to choke. He lowered the fixing pressure and Tonia went on, her lips pressing to his own. Her tongue was...

...warm, rough, sweet...

Bitter. Hot and...

Henry choked when suddenly something incredible bitter was filling his mouth, his throat and he almost cramped when he fought for breath which he couldn´t suck in. Suffocating...suffocating on all-consuming blackness...

His hands came up, he couldn´t scream, unable to push off the weight of that body on him, when anything was boring thru the skin into the base of his head with the sharpness of a dagger. His brain seemed to explode and to go ablaze. He couldn´t scream because darkness was thrusting its way down his gorge, filling it completely.

Before darkness clasped his brain, dragging him down, he could see vertically slit, yellow eyes...

"Got you, my darling! You can´t even imagine what you will be expecting...!"

Her voice was like a dagger of glass.

Darkness was whirling in front of darkness...and his lights went off...

**Anywhere...**

Stygian darkness. Darkness, anything dark, anywhere or darkness was whirling in front of darkness, was whirling in front of him? Was this hell, that was sucking him up? Astaroth, who simply had gulped him down?

The darkness got lit up a bit, when he forced his eyes open to narrow slits. Only to found it being exchanged by emetic nausea and headache, that felt as if a driller was working its way thru his brain. More than narrow slits wasn´t possible and more he didn´t dare to try.

As far as his dizziness allowed him to see, he seemed to be lying anywhere. At least the perspective of a ceiling above him indicated it...when it would be a ceiling and not a wall... Otherwise that would mean that he´d be standing anywhere at a wall, what won´t be possible due to his current condition without help or any support.

Wooden cross. Chains. The awakening after the blow torch attack, after the relief of unconsciousness, had been filled with pain all over his body, dizziness and fear.

When he would be tied up again...

Carefully Henry tried out if he might move a hand. His fingers stretched, shoving over the whatsoever under his fingertips. His wrist was following. Test. Test.

His fingers were moving, his arm. He tried to force his brain to move a leg. With full concentration he managed it to curve his toes at least, when he imagined his toes. Or was it only an imagination? As numb as his legs were feeling, Henry didn´t believe, that he would be able to use his walking tools for a simple standing only over the next time.

What for Christ´s sake was going on with him? What had happened?

Anything had been drilling into the back of his head with the force of an icy and at the same time glowing hot needle, almost driving his brain to explode. Had...? Was...? Had this woman, this..._thing_...perhaps anything...into his spine, his spinal marrow...? Heaven, Vicki had explained him, that damages of the sensitive, nerve filled channel inside the spine could cause paraplegia.

Was he paralyzed perhaps?

Panic was crawling up in him from the darkest corners of his mind, before he could bring up so much brains against it, that he could act on the assumption, that his vampire body should be able to repair something like that. _Should!_ What if it was anything else? The Illuminacion, this devil´s tool, had paralyzed him too. Black magic? Devilish witchcraft, which could paralyze him, the vampire...?

Drugs?

That would explain his paralyzed, half numbed state, when anybody had shot him anything. Sounded reasonable...no finger, but a cannula, directly into his spinal marrow.

With a groan he clenched his teeth so hard, that his fangs were almost digging into his lower lip, when a new wave of weakness and nausea was rolling over him. He hadn´t felt so sick to the stomach anymore, since Vicki had helped him to throw up the Jia-o-gulan poisoned blood of this mad priest.

Who was this woman who had kidnapped him? Because this definitely looked like a kidnapping. The room in which he was, didn´t look like a laboratory at least. Since there were laboratories set up, he had never been able to get rid of the irrational fear again, that anybody might displace him to such a laboratory any day. And he would be ending up, transfixed to an examination table like a laboratory rat, to be cut in pieces in undead state. In the old ages they had only hunted him to kill him. Not to cut him in his parts, at least not by curiosity...only by rage.

If his arm would be working, he could at least roll over to the side, when his stomach would decide to do what vampire stomachs won´t do...normally. To get rid of stuff... Henry concentrated on his right arm, imaging how he would be extending and the fingers would be pressing to the ground and his muscles would tense, so his arm would be able to pull his body around. Only that there was no firm anchor for his hand, which would be a fixing point for such a movement.

He gasped when he tried to move his fingers...

Nothing.

He tried again. Again it didn´t work. His arm, like his leg, seemed to be completely numb, insensitive. What the heck had she shot him? Even opium wasn´t that paralyzing. I´ll have to ask Dr. Mohadevan for it. If I´ll be surviving this...

In the moment his chances were looking rather bad, because whosoever had done whatsoever and out of which reason to him, had done this thoroughly! In fact; _she_.

Only his head seemed to work, his hearing. His hearing that was telling him now that anybody was approaching. It were light-footed steps like by a woman. And for a split second he had the hope that Vicki might have been following his kidnapper and that she would come for him now. Like she had been when Mendoza had hold him captive. He had smelled her specific scent, recognized her heartbeat, but the dragging sound told him that she wasn´t walking on her own feet, but was dragged by someone. Mendoza. He has had her! Intending her to become his unfortunate and unwilling blood source. Donor would have been the wrongest of all words to name her...

His hope died faster than a heartbeat when he heard heels. No booties. Vicki was always running around in booties, because it was more practically. That was definitely _not_ Vicki! Neither her scent nor her heartbeat which was so familiar to him now.

Anybody was tampering with a lock and massive bars. A heavy, wooden door was opened and when it swung open, some more light came into the room than by the old, half burned out fluorescent tube that came to life now with a flickering.

Because Henry couldn´t neither turn his head nor move any part of his body, he had to wait until the person was beside him, so he could see who or what it was. Human, demon or...? As not to be expected otherwise, it was Tonia, this little, disingenuous slut, who first had seduced him...yes, seduced...and then had gotten him down stone-cold.

"What do you want? _You_?" Henry cawed. He was astonished, that he was able to speak at least, when even with much effort and with a fraction of his normal voice power. But here was nothing to be called normal.

"Hi, sweetie!" she grinned derisively, when she bent half over him, certain that he couldn´t attack her as long as she didn´t shove her hand between his teeth.

Henry growled, his eyes had turned bled black and his fangs were extended to their full length. Despite his helplessness he looked dangerously enough.

"Ochh, did you hurt you..." she directed to his lower lip which he had broken with his teeth and where the blood was drying yet. But the bite marks didn´t heal. Henry could feel it and this was no good sign, showing him that anything was wrong with him.

"I wish...I could...hurt _you_!" Henry growled.

"But you cant! And when this..." her finger was moving half an inch away from his face. "...hurts, then wait, what else I´m able to do to you, Henry Fitzroy!" Her finger was hovering along his torso down to his feet.

"I´ve been tortured recently and as you see, I´m still alive!" Henry shot back. That was more born by rage then by the hope, that he could anyway impress his opponent by it. Her next words let him solidify inwardly.

"That, what Javier Mendoza had done to you?" Her lips pursed in a malicious gesture of pity, when she tilted her head to the side. "_That_? That was child´s play...kid´s stuff! Mendoza was a baby when it came to such things!"

Where the heck did she know Mendoza from, the Inquisitor, whom he already had seen at his father´s court. But Henry had no time to think about her answer.

"Once I´ve been beginning with you, you will...before I really got started with you...be whimpering to be at Javier´s to enjoy his baubles instead of getting involved with me, Henry Fitzroy!" she sharply laughed, orbiting him before she stopped again in front of his face that was a mask of rage now.

"There´s much more worse than death! And you´ll be still whimpering for it! Believe me!" She laughed with a devilish sparkling in her eyes. She walked around him once again, looking down at him as if she was thinking of what she might do first. He could literally see her mind working on the most effective procedure of torturing. She would begin with something that was causing pain, but not that much pain that he would become unconsciously directly. The torturers of Inquisition first tried to cause that kinda pain, that would convince a victim, an accused, that it would be better to confess fast...before further techniques came into use.

_There´s much more worse than death, this you must believe me..._

"How much has Lord Astaroth paid you...that you wanna kill me?" Henry´s voice was dark and he hissed the words from between half opened fangs.

"Lord Astaroth? Lord Astaroth...who´s that guy? I´m working alone. Almost...at least." She seemed to believe Lord Astaroth to be any guy, any killer, who named himself from a creature from hell. Either she wasn´t familiar with Christian faith or she didn´t care about, the less being afraid of the forces of hell as a modern time woman, or she felt strong enough to come up against almost everything, fortified by the Holy sacraments. As he was still wearing his pendant with the small cross, she could see, that neither a cross and the less the silver could do him any harm, nor that it could weaken or stop him anyway. He asked himself if she was able to feel the power that was emanating from the sacred cross. There were creatures of hell which were warded off by the power of sacred silver...and the sign of the cross. But she had been so near to him, that he´d have seen any effect on her, if any...

"Who are your principals? When you are going to kill me anyway, I want to know at least why I have to die!" Henry pointed out.

"You´ve killed my uncle, Henry Fitzroy! Fra Franceso dos Santos Angelico di Domenico."

Santos Angelico di Domenico. That was the Dominican order who had tortured Ginevra to death. His heart almost stopped at the memory and the relation she pointed out.

"And you´ve killed my father!" she spat at him full of hatred, her once beautiful face was torn by rage.

"Who is your father?" Henry gasped.

"Javier Mendoza! The Great Inquisitor at the Spanish Court! And therefore you´ll pay, vampire! Her brown eyes turned to vertical, yellow slits and her hands clenched to fists.

Definitely _not human_!

At least he was knowing now with whom he had to cope. When she was telling the truth, then she was either a ghost or an animated corpse or Mendoza has had a secret fruit of his even not so virginal loins. Or she had kept herself alive with the same wicked methods as her father had formerly used.

"Which devilish deal has he urged you to make, to get your hands on me?" Henry snarled.

"The misery with you is, that you´re always so fixed on your thing with the devil. But of this, my father has warned me about, after you have killed him!" She made a disdainful gesture, hauling off and kicked with the tip of her foot against the side of his head, using full force without any visible effort. Wouldn´t his bones haven´t been strengthened by the turning, he might have heard his temple bone crackling when it would have fractured.

_After_ he had killed him!The church there hadn´t been used anymore and though! When it hadn´t been desecrated, defiled by satanic rites, then it had still been a place of the Lord. He had killed Javier and had hidden his body, returning in the following night to bury the halfway decayed corpse in an empty tomb in the ground, despite of what the man had done to him. Had buried him by the Roman Rites which allowed every believer to bury a passed away without a priest, when it happened with the just thought and willing. What actually obviated that Javier´s ghost would be roaming restlessly. But if anybody had opened the grave and had subjected Javier´s mortal remains a forbidden ritual for an awakening of the soul...

"Have you...desecrated...your father´s soul? Snatching it from death by a damnable ritual!?" Henry choked under the tormenting headache that was milling thru his skull with the force of a crushing mill.

"I have WHAT?" she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, dragging up his body with an astonishing strength and brutally banged him back on the ground, so that Henry´s head hit the moist ground tiles with a thud. Henry´s lips opened and a dull sound slipped from his mouth, half stifled and darkness was rolling over him.

"Uh, don´t become unconsciously! I´m by no means ready with you! I didn´t get started rudimentary with you at least! Just as I said; the baubles of my father are nothing in relation to the methods, which are offered to us by the modern times to take my revenge on you!"

"Wha...what have..." Henry breathed stertorously when his skull was pounding.

"I don´t need such gadgets like the Illuminacion, to make those of your kind manageable. Even your vampire body isn´t immune against some certain stuff!" she bent over him, her hands were at the neckline of his hoodie again.

_Not again!_

When she would smash his head on the tiles in this manner more often, even his bones would give in and he would lose blood. Lots of blood. Though he even hadn´t been feeding this night to cover his normal need.

His head remained on the ground.

"You...you have...me..." he gasped barely audible.

"Yes!" her smile was so devilish, that even the servant´s of Astaroth would have shuddered from fear. "I´ve shot you something what is preventing you from moving! Most of these substances like Curare have the handicap that they additionally paralyze the breathing reflex, so that I would have to ventilate you to keep you alive. But this one...this one has the benefit, that you can´t move, but you´re staying consciously and you will be able to speak...

...and to scream!"

Had Henry tried to provoke her until yet, to explore her real strength and to find out about weaknesses, which might be useful for him, so that had come to an end now at the latest. His stomach was revolting and his intellect, his mind threatened to stall by the clear imagination of what he had to expect...

_There´s much more worse than death, this you must believe me._

"I´ll be right back, Henry!"

Henry heard her steps disappearing. Heard. It was impossible for him to follow her with his eyes, because he couldn´t turn his head, the less to lift him but if someone would straighten him up. He rarely had physically been feeling so helplessly like now, when he couldn´t move by his own strength. The last time he had been in an equal state, had been when he had this damn Jia-o-gulan in his system, which kept him off his daytime sleep because his heart was beating too fast. But there had been Vicki and Mike with him, humans whom he could trust to.

Not someone like this...woman...this _thing_, whatever she also was...

Henry tried to concentrate on his breathing, to get some calmness in his system, what was easier said than to be done. He had experienced torture in his career twice by Mendoza, additionally to it countless injuries in his long lifetime when he had been hunted over and over again. But anywhere deep from his capacity of remembrance was some information coming up, which he had caught occasionally. CTV, the main TV channel in Canada was bringing information, which were critical to the system when it came to the violation of human rights in certain countries. In order to protect his psyche, his mind denied it to realize, that he was exactly in the same situation like the victims of these assaults and abuse. He desperately tried to concentrate on any possibilities of an escape, but all his thinking didn´t help as he realized after every thought, that he could kick that down the drain, because he was unable to move a single finger. In the moment he was entirely busy with regaining control over such discomforts like nausea and these attacks of dizziness. When his body would lose control, that would turn out to be more than a medium catastrophe. Principally a vampire couldn´t die from suffocation, but the imagination of whatsoever of stomach contents in his wind-pipe...

Anywhere a cellphone was ringing...

Henry´s head was suffering from emetic headache, that was a result from this devilish stuff that she had shot him and the fact, that she had used his head as a football. So it took him some time to identify the ring tone as his own.

Damn it!

Anybody tried to reach him and his cellphone was definitely anywhere in this room, where it had been placed by someone, together with his other belongings. When he would have a cell now, which could be switched on by his voice...as far as he could remind it, this was called voice controlled...then he could have answered the call. Should it be Vicki, then he could only hope, that she would get the idea to locate it, before this monster would react to the ringing and switch the cellphone off. Fortunately he only switched it off when he was busy, that is when he was about to feed...

_To be continued_


	2. Chapter 2 Is there a slight chance?

**There´s sometimes more than you´re expecting **

_**Chapter 2**_

**Is there a slight chance...?**

Vicki walked to the front door and back into the living-room again. Anyway she had a feeling of inner restlessness. Coreen had come, had taken his keys and had brought him fresh, and foremost clean clothes, so he could drive home without problems. Then she had gone again. He has had his daily dosage of unpleasantness, more than he thought he would be able to cope with. Every support in one of Vicki´s cases seemed inevitably ending up with coping with Fitzroy and his weird cases.

"What are you running around like a caged tiger, Vic?" Mike asked while he pulled over his jacket. He registered that Vicki was looking on her clock over and over again.

"I´m not running caged tiger!" she grunted.

"And why are you constantly looking on your clock? Are you afraid that we won´t get away from that Prince-of-Darkness palace offshoot." He grinned.

"You can already drive home, Mike! As usually. Your work starts in about an hour!"

"Fitzroy has said, that he wants to be _alone_ at sunrise! What of _alone_ don´t you understand?"

"It´s shortly before sunrise, Mike...and Henry isn´t back yet!" Vicki confronted him, pushing her hands on her hips, when she shot him an icy view.

"And, what? Fitzroy is old enough to take care of himself. Eventually he´s older than all of us together. Or do ya wanna babysit him now, Vic? Of this he may be really _excited_, the way you have been discussing earlier!"

"I won´t make the babysitter here, Mike! Not for you and also not for Henry! It´s only already damn late and when he won´t show up here in a jiffy, Henry will definitely get problems!"

"Only when he´s then standing in front of a window without a blind. And as far as I´m reminding it, in the hallway are no windows and the elevator isn´t of glass! So." Mike laconically shrugged his shoulders, grabbed his coat and was about to leave Henry´s home.

"I for my part, am not up for a collision with Henry, when he comes home and gets pissy, cause we didn´t fly the coop. His order had been clear and when he had left, he had been in a mood like a garbage can with a blocking lid. In your case I´d take care to make yourself scarce. For my part...leave him a message. Then he can call back, when he had slept. Just if he´ll be up to it!"

"Get outta here, Mike and don´t care about my things. That´s none of your business."

"I´m right out!" Mike pulled the door closed into its lock with some force and she heard him stomping down the hallway to the elevator.

"Why must this bastard always give the psychologist again. Slowly he should know, that I don´t emphasize it and Vicki isn´t up for his psycho wish-wash!" Mike grunted, when the elevator had started his way down. With his head shaking no, he waited to reach the lounge.

Upstairs Vicki was looking on her clock.

It was sunrise. Two minutes ago!

Shit! Henry wasn´t back now!

"Damn it, Henry? Where the heck or better, where in heaven are you? I don´t wanna brush up your ashes with a dustpan!" Vicki swallowed hard. Determined she hit the #dial key under which Henry´s number was saved. Impatiently she waited, then she let it ring. Commonly and in his age he doesn´t drop to the ground on the stroke of twelve like cut by an ax. His mailbox and his answering machine didn´t switch on. Normally he was accessible, especially when he was working with her. But he was hanging at the jugular vein of one of his meal-on-legs. Of other areas she didn´t want to think of now, though the thought of where he might bite her, was driving an unwelcome, warm shudder down to her lower parts.

"Crap! Henry! Answer it!" she growled in her cellphone when she let it ring on. When he has gotten stuck anywhere and unable to get away cause of sunrise, she could pick him up and get him home. And when I´ll even need a damn card box, which I´ll have to shove in a cargo cab!

Any time later she remarked, that she was still holding the cell in her hand. The call signal had turned from green to red, what meant that he either hadn´t answered the call, being unavailable, or that he had switched his cell off. Vicki sighed. She forced herself with an iron will to stop her restless round through Henry´s home and to sit down in the living-room.

When Henry was stuck anywhere yet, cause he had missed the sunrise, it was quite possible that he had taken a fitting refuge and was now falling into his regular daytime sleep. And that could be anywhere in Toronto, so it was senseless to search for him blindly. Probably Mike was right with it and she would have to wait for a message from Henry. She had no clue how long exactly he would stay awake after sunrise. The few times she had stayed with him when he had fallen awake, had been when the demon had severely hurt him and after they had freed him from Mendoza´s cellar. The first time he had some problems to fall asleep and after his rescue he had been so turned up, that he practically had been awake until noon; all of it no measure for normal daily routine.

She got an idea.

Vicki dialed Coreen´s number and let it ring. It took some time and she looked impatiently on the innocent screen until finally a very tired voice answered her call.

"Hi...it´s Coreen here..." her assistant mumbled. Obviously she had been right on her way into her bed to get the well deserved sleep. Vicki could pay no attention to this fact. Not when it came to her partner...

"Coreen! Vicki here! Listen...has Henry gotten in touch with you?"

"Why...?" Coreen mumbled with a voice that was heavy with sleep and with her hand she dug through her hair, pushing herself upward in bed on her elbow.

"Why?! Coreen! Has he or has he not?" Vicki sounded impatiently.

"No, Ms. Nelson...So, I haven´t been called by him! Additionally I don´t believe that he´ll be much up to anything after tonight´s slime orgy. Anyway Henry looked frustrated to me, as far as I can see that or judge it. Has Mike him...again? Yup, ya know what I mean..."

"They didn´t quarrel, Coreen! We had some conversation and after it Henry left, obviously to get a bite between his teeth."

"Where from are you calling yet?" Slowly Coreen grow skeptically.

"I´m calling from his home! To be correct; I´m sitting here since tonight and Henry hasn´t been showing up here again, since he drove off. That is it, Coreen!" She stared angrily at her cellphone.

"Not. Showing up. Again!? Does that mean...?" Suddenly Coreen was fully awake and her heart started to beat faster.

What was going on with Henry? Simply disappearing, that wasn´t his thing, also when Mike and Vicki had some blowups with Henry. A vampire who wasn´t suitable to daylight won´t give up his refuge so easily!

"Yep! I´m waiting and waiting and Henry does not come home!" Vicki groaned and dug with her right hand through her hair. She had gotten up from her seat again without acting consciously and taken up her round through the living-room again.

"Hopefully he isn´t lying around anywhere with burns...or worse...!"

"Thank you for support, Coreen, you´re very tender-hearted once again!" Vicki growled. Sometimes her assistant was such straightforward that she wondered, how she had been going along with it. Burns or worse! Why didn´t she right say : dead!? The thought of a Henry lying anywhere...she had to gulp down hard and was feeling, how much he really meant to her meanwhile...dead or severely hurt... They had almost lost him no three weeks ago! That wasn´t to become what she had in mind for a relationship, even when a vampire potentially had some higher risk to die...as from sunlight, fire, stakes or farmers with pitch-forks and torches.

"Sorry, Ms. Nelson...Though, do you know, where he wanted to drive to? Did Henry say anything? I mean, mostly he goes to any clubs in Downtown. Queen, King Street or to the Distillery..." Coreen suggested what came to her mind from what he had told you.

"Coreen, it´s morning yet and most of the clubs are closed, so it may become difficult to ask somebody if he has seen Henry...above all Henry is acting rather unobtrusively. Out of reason..." Vicki replied.

"Has he taken a cap or did he left with his Jag? The cab company registers all tours and a black Jaguar isn´t even the most unremarkable car of all!" Coreen gave back, in an attempt to say just anything and it wasn´t as if Vicki won´t have been coming up with such options. Eventually she was an ex-cop and now-private eye.

"Okay, Coreen! I´ll check thru the cap companies and you´ll checking, which clubs on Queen and King are still open until the morning. When I don´t find out anything, we´ll have to go ringing doorbells, that is, to pound every club and watch around, if Henry´s Jag is parked anywhere. Just in case it hadn´t been stolen meanwhile...I´ll call ya later..."

**Anywhere**...

The ringing of the cellphone broke off and for a moment it was very silent in the room. Henry only heard the humming of the fluorescent tube, whose glass had become rather grayish-yellow than white and at the ends slightly darker areas were appearing, a sign that this thing was already beyond its best times. Its light was lighting up the room only dimly, a circumstance which Henry didn´t regret now, because the lamp was hanging from the ceiling right above him. And as much as he appreciated moderate light, so discomforting was the light now for his pounding skull.

H had the feeling that his head was stuck in a booming grinder and waves of dizziness were coming over again, follow by a wave of emetic nausea.

It was strange, he thought, how somebody could be concentrating on such secondary things like a lamp´s condition under these special circumstances. Apart from that, the constant humming, that only his sensitive vampire hearing could notice, was adding another nuance to the pounding inside his head. The ability to hear in this high frequency range was a reason why Henry didn´t use fluorescent tubes in his home. Additionally those might be easily exchanged against ultraviolet emanating tubes which would have the same effect on him like plain, natural sunlight.

He felt a new wave of nausea rising, swallowed convulsively and tried to turn his head to the side, trying to get his stomach under control with an iron will. Henry groaned deeply when he had the feeling that in his neck anything was piercing right between his spine bones...

The wooden door was opened.

Henry groaned, he tried to overcome the leaden heaviness, which were mixing up with the sharp pain in his neck.

Steps.

Breathing. Pain. Dizziness.

Steps.

His stomach revolted. What goddamn rat poison...?

Henry groaned and gasped for breath, when the dizziness, mixed with the boring pain in the back of his head, let his stomach cramping up. He wanted to breathe through and then he lost the fight against his body, when...

The steps were very near.

...his stomach violently emptied.

To throw up was bad enough, but by far not that bad, as when one wasn´t able to turn around then.

Hands grabbed him with brutal violence.

Throwing him around.

"Damn crap! I might you..." the woman cursed, when she brutally rolled him over to the side. "Goddamn mess! Nobody said that you shall puke all over here!"

Disgustedly she wiped her hands off on his hoodie sweater.

Enraged Henry stared at her, saliva and stomach contents were dripping from his mouth when he desperately fought for breath. The convulsions were emptying his stomach and he couldn´t do anything else but trying, not to get all that stuff into his wind-pipe. When the convulsions subsided, he tried to stare at her from tearing eyes.

"Mu...must...drink..." he helplessly cawed hoarsely.

"You will not get any blood now! When you want blood, lick it up from the ground!" She pushed his hand in the pool of blood, that was spreading under him. "I´ve already seen much, but this mess when a vampire pukes blood! My father was right! You are abhorrent creatures. I´m only sorry that he didn´t burn you off, before he died! You have killed him and you´ll pay for it, Henry Fitzroy!" she brought his name out with such contempt, as only deepest hatred could cause it. Who knows what Javier once had taught her about vampires or other creatures.

She stepped behind him and Henry screamed, when she pulled anything out of his spinal column and threw it on the ground. She kicked it in front of his eyes, so that he could see what it was.

It was a very long, flexible cannula.

The burning pain in his neck subsided, but the sight of what she had pulled out of his neck just now, would have been enough to cause a new attack of vomiting, wouldn´t his stomach be already empty. At least he couldn´t vomit anymore, but the little blood what he has had in his body from the last feeding, was lost yet too. Latest in the next night he definitely would start to feel it.

Henry swallowed convulsively, tried to ignore the blood taste, that was filling now his mouth.

"Drink...! Water! I...need water...!" Henry gasped. "Please!" he added. In the moment it was irrespective to him, how vulnerable he was now. He couldn´t change it and he couldn´t have become more vulnerable as in his current paralyzed state.

She could easily drag him outside, into the sunlight, watching him slowly burning down to ashes. If God was full of mercy, dying in sunlight would be rather fast, maybe...when it was _really fast_...it would only take seconds. Otherwise she could tie him to a wooden post at nighttime, lighting up a pile of wood and slowly burn him alive. Like they had done to witches during the inquisition. That would take an unbearable long time. He had suffered severe burns once, almost dying from it when London burnt down in 1666. The pain...

It was only a date to the humans; 1666. Like any date else. But this it was only in human´s eyes, who didn´t understand. They had accused a man for arson, had death sentenced him as any other option was...impossible to accept!

1666

What meant 1-666. The 1 didn´t matter other than "once", as once was related to one time of a couple of times. Important were the three following numbers: 6-6-6. Three times the six- the number of the animal. The devil, Lucifer. The numbers of the devil! This fire hadn´t been started by a conscious human´s will. That poor guy had only been a tool, an instrument in the hands of the forces of hell, driven, possessed by the demon who kept hell´s fire on blaze; Xaphan!

His undead mind had been drifting off for a mere second with preternatural speed. One of the vampire skills too! He switched back to reality, to the now and here so fast, that she didn´t even notice it, whatever she also was/is...

But his body was in need of liquid, any liquid, when already no blood was available, as she had promised him with enjoyment. When she was believing, that she had him driven so far, that he would lick up the blood from the ground, then she was wrong about this at least. Principally starved out vampires weren´t very sensitive when it came to the _source_ of blood. But he would rather starve than doing her the favor to debase himself that way in front of her eyes.

"Uh, oh, Look! Well, well how about that! The great Henry Fitzroy can in fact say _please_! My father has warned me of your haughtiness and your royal affectation! But the Tudors are history and you have no power at all among the humans. Perhaps still among your kind only. But even this will have come to an end, when you yourself will only be dust in the dust of history!" She laughed loudly and he heard her walking through the room.

Moments later she was back beside him, shoving a pitcher with water to his side with her foot.

"Water! Drink! There won´t be a new chance coming for you so soon!" she looked down on him with an icy view.

Henry could smell the water and his body was following his basic instincts only to substitute lost liquid at any cost. With tearing eyes he tried to pull the pitcher with his hand to his lips, but he realized that he won´t manage that alone.

Angrily he closed his eyes, licking over his bloodied lips and he looked at her, trying to let his voice sound firmly when he growled; "You´ll have to help me, after you´ve paralyzed me with whatsoever! Unless you will relinquish to keep me alive long enough for your intent!"

"There you may be right with it, Henry Fitzroy! I don´t want prematurely shorten my enjoyment by simply letting you die of thirst. In which it would be interesting to find out, by what you´ll die faster: from the lack of blood or by thirst."

She bent down to him, took up the pitcher and grabbed with her other hand in his curls, pulling his head up so far that he could close his lips around the edge of the pitcher. For a moment his face distorted when his whole head with its full weight was hanging only at his hair. Then he pushed the headache aside and started to swallow carefully.

His instinct warned him to just drink, but he was so thirsty, that he was throwing all caution to the wind and started to gulp down the water, before she would change her mind. When the pitcher was empty, she let his head sink back to the ground, rather putting him down this time than simply letting him drop.

A sigh slipped from Henry´s lips and then he heard the soft rustling of plastic foil, that occurs when a package was ripped open.

Blood?

No blood, as he found out directly when she that, what she did, was doing in front of his eyes, so that he had the possibility to watch her. Tonia had put on gloves and a long needle with a slim tube was glistening in her hand. She bent down to him.

"No!" Henry choked. "No!" he couldn´t prevent it that his voice sounded fearfully, when she turned him around further so that she got access to the back of his head.

"No! Please...don´t!" he choked in horror.

Again she would...

The pain would return and the choking nausea, when she would shoot him that stuff yet. Henry didn´t know how long he was already lying here at all, since she had knocked him out in the club on King Street. He didn´t know if it still was night or just after sunrise. Cause of the drug, that was circulating in his system, he couldn´t trust anymore his vampire instincts and his body´s natural reaction to the sunrise.

"Your whimpering will not help you! You don´t believe in earnest, that I´ll be taking any risk with you! My father has warned me about you! Your strength and your power of resistance are sufficiently known, Henry Fitzroy!"

He felt pain, rather pressure than a sting when she stung the needle anywhere in the intersection between his neck and the back of his head and it went deeper. Henry clenched his teeth with such force that his jaws hurt, only to suppress a scream. With tensed muscles he was waiting for what he already knew from the club.

Wavering, all suffocating darkness.

She was handling behind him and then his brain seemed to explode in his skull, when she pushed down the piston of the syringe. Black claws closed around his lower jaw and the remains of blood in his mouth turned into a black flood. He wanted to fight for air, but there were only dull sounds coming from his throat when a heatwave seemed to disconnect his mind from the rest of his body. His body seemed to dissolve and the feeling of paralysis let panic well up in him.

She must have seen the reaction in his eyes.

"Don´t worry! That will be over soon! And then you´ll still be feeling enough, vampire!"

"I...sch...wha...at?" he choked almost unintelligibly.

"Seemed to work!" she mumbled and as for acknowledgment she kicked against his shinbone. When he pressed out a groan, she grinned. "I don´t want that you´ll run off here!" She pulled the syringe out and let Henry roll over on his back again where he kept lying motionless. "But you even can´t that, because the sun has risen long ago. Unless you´re up to a burn off"

So it was daytime since long and the damn stuff in his body kept him off from reacting normally and falling into the releasing daytime sleep.

Once again.

But this time it was definitely no Jia-o-gulan! Which devilish stuff did she use...?

His gums were strangely furry and numb and he heard when she left the room. Henry pressed out a throaty scream of rage and desperation. Useless. But it was the only thing to what he was able to in the moment and it felt good. Also when Vicki could not hear him.

Vicki! Vicki! Please help me! Get me outta here, before she... His mind denied to think further on.

He didn´t want to die yet.

Not here and now...

**Toronto Downtown**

Vicki had been calling through the cab company, without success. In this night hadn´t gone any tour from the Renaissance Plaza to any club. So Henry must have used his own car, she stated.

"Coreen! We´ll have to split up! You´re going to the Queen Street and searching for his black Jaguar with the license plate BCCE-124 for Ontario! I´ll searching thru King Street and then we´ll turn to the side streets. Anywhere Henry has got to!" she informed her assistant on phone.

"Maybe he has crept into his luggage trunk for hiding like Nick Night in Forever Knight...What means too, that in no case you shall open his luggage trunk..." Coreen meant.

"Thank you for the advise! I even didn´t know, that it doesn´t become him!" Vicki snarled

"Sorry, Ms. Nelson, I only wanted..." Coreen began.

"Yeah, yup! Bli bla blup spoke the fish! Com´on! Swing your goth body down the stairs and make yourself useful with searching! We don´t have time to waste, when Mike already put barriers in the path!" Vicki grunted. Thinking of Mike was driving her mood down the drain.

"But if we won´t find Henry, then Mike comes in! Cases of missing persons are police business."

"I wanna see Mike´s face when I tell him, that our vampire has gone lost already again. The last time had been only three weeks ago and Mike still isn´t in full possession of his tankful!" she indicated the theme that Mike had donated rather unwillingly more than one and a quarter liter of blood during the last Henry-Fitzroy-has-to-be-rescued-action.

"We´ll already find Henry, Ms. Nelson..." Coreen replied when she closed her jacket while leaving and then she stepped down the stairs. "When you´ll find something or find out, call me please! I´ll do the same."

"Good. See ya later, Coreen!"

Vicki almost lost her patience, when today the elevator seemed to need eternally to the lounge and when she finally arrived there, she only waved fleetingly to Greg when she hurried out for the street. She almost slipped on a layer of compacted snow, but at least it was so bright now that she could see better and more clearly. An advantage at least when one had to search for a vampire like in a spot-the-mouse game.

The gray daylight, which came from the sky that was up the pole with snow, was better than to stab around in the dark. In a darkness that was stinking of things one didn´t want to know what they were or more exactly; what they had been. As modern as Toronto was, there was, not far away from her own home, a place in the gutter where even in the greatest heat of summer, a pool of black liquid denied to dry out, giving of indefinable smells. When she had occasionally watched closer, she could not have gone rid of the imagination, that any day anything would crawl out of it...like any creepy, creeping, crawling creature from outer space. Or from the otherworld. Maybe a watch-out spot of Astaroth, like a spy hole...? Vicki shuddered, now not only by the cold. Angrily she wiped the thought aside.

When Vicki reached the King Street, the entertainment area was already running on daytime business. Most of the partygoers had left and most of the clubs were already closed to give space to the normal employees.

Vicki jumped to the side with a curse, when in front of an entrance somebody switched on a leaf blower to test out if this noise machine might be blowing snow as well as leaves.

It could.

Suddenly Vicki found herself in a whirling cloud of powder snow, which let her look like a Christmas decoration covered by powdered sugar only three steps ahead.

"You idiot! I´ll press charges against you cause of disturbance and the inappropriate use of technical supplies contrary to the authorized instructions!" she cursed.

"I don´t give a flying fuck, Lady! Over there´s a broom, with which you can brush up the street! Then I can indeed allow me a cup of hot tea meanwhile. And that does not violate the instructions for the use of tea bags!" He laughed out loudly and aimed the leaf blower explicitly in her direction, looking after Vicki with a smirk, when she ran away and shook the snow out of her hair with both hands.

Her eyes searched down the lane in the hope to see anywhere Henry´s Jaguar. Just in case that not anybody else had make use of it already.

In front of a club a man was closing a barring chain. He didn´t pay any attention to her until she carefully patted his back. He turned his head.

"It´s closed, Lady! We´ll open tonight seven pm!" He watched down Vicki and by her clothing he could see, that she didn´t look like the usual partygoer. "Or are you from the Department of public order, Madam?" The snippy _Lady_ had turned into a more politely _Madam_.

"Why? Do you have a bad conscience?" she answered when she let her view glide from his shoulders down to his waist. Tough guy who was only doing his job.

" Nope, Madam! Then you aren´t from the department? My liquor license has been renewed one month ago. All lege artis* (*due to law)"

"I don´t wanna see your license! I´m searching for somebody."

"Then you´re from the police?"

Vicki shook her head no.

"No, no more! I´m searching for a man...I don´t know if he had been here yesterday evening and if he´s a regular guest at yours..."

"Listen, Miss! Lots of peeps in here...and I´m glad so! But I can´t memorize every night´s faces! I´ve full house every night!" the man explained.

"You might have remarked him; Approximately my size, dark brown hair, neck long curls, blue eyes. Blue jeans, gray coat, gray hoodie sweater. So relatively small, uhm..." A sentence came to her mind which she once had heard; "Small, handsome guy..."

"Uh, this one!" his face was lighting up and Vicki pricked her ears.

"I remind this guy, now ya´re sayin it. He asked for Freddy the barkeeper...but Freddy had his day off yesterday and then he´s gone..." he lifted one hand to indicate a body size.

"So he left again. Do you know where to?" Vicki hooked in and gave the waiter a smoldering look.

"There along...!" he indicated into the eastern direction of King Street. "He caught my attention. His view! Ya know, when I saw your eyes, Ms.! Anything , how shall I say...he has had such intensive, burning glance how...uhm...like you. But I don´t know where he finally made landfall. As I´ve said, had lots of business here yesterday..." he brought in additionally.

"Okay, thanks so far." Vicki smiled and started to move in a southern direction.

Probably Henry has had his Prince-of-darkness-number running to get a specific information. Freddy the barkeeper perhaps had been a make-believe, which the man should remind. Typically Henry.

Vicki searched down the street, lurking in gateways, which were wide enough for cars, but except for garbage cans, bicycles and for some cars, which were all but no black Jaguar, she found nothing.

A bit apart, Vicki tried the door of another club. Just in the moment when she wanted to jar at the lock with some vigor, the open was opened from inside. A guy of the size of a wardrobe, clad in black leather and with so much tattoos on his skull, that one would have to stitch a second layer for new ones, pulled the door from her hand.

"Hi!" Vicki smiled at him, trying to let it sound as causally as possible. Ouch! She would have felt way better now with Henry at her side. Sometimes a vampire could be some life- or at least a health insurance, she thought. Because...

"Lady! What do you want?" The man was at least one and a half head taller than her and his neck muscles indicated, that he belonged to the coalition of bouncers than to the service personal. "It´s closed here!" His voice was not even dripping from politeness.

"Thought so! Otherwise it won´t be locked." Vicki put her trust-the-cop-smile on her face. "I´m searching for someone..."

"It´s nobody in here!"

"However! You´re here!" Vicki countered.

The guy laughed. Well, the ice seemed to be broken or at least it had gotten a crack, Vicki thought.

"Anyway I´ve lost contact to my friend last night...perhaps you´ll remind him." Vicki fumbled for the photo, that they had found in the other church. The church in which Delphine had burnt up. She directed on the photo.

"Who? The blonde? I didn´t see this one in here!" Obviously he supposed, that Mike was the one she was searching for, related to her appearance.

"No, not the blonde. The other one..." once again she showed him the photo, directing to Henry.

"Alas! The small one beside him. You´ve could have said that directly..." he grinned. "No wonder he got lost..."

"I´ve lost him. Not otherwise around." Vicki countered. "So, have you seen him?" she brought up the cop a bit. When she won´t find Henry soon...

"Uhm, prob..." The man scratched his skull. "Can be. Can be not." He tilted his head thoughtfully back and forth, he pulled a face. Vicki felt her fist tingle, but she had to pull herself together now.

"Alas! What now?"

"I might have seen him..."

Vicki knew pretty well what that meant. Perhaps the guy had seen Henry, but he wasn´t willing to deliver information without a trade-off, said dough. With a sigh Vicki fumbled in the pocket of her leather jacket, got out a twenty dollar bill and gave it to him. Normally these exceptional input was flowing into a clients bill. The man grinned and Vicki hated that, but right now she was in need of such sleaze bags.

The man pushed the money in his pocket, rearranging his jacket pockets with ostentation, before he directed on the photo again.

"Yup! I´ve seen the small one in here last night. He came early I the morning and then he hopped off into the hindmost corner, where this dark haired was sitting..."

So Henry had searched himself some meal...

"Which dark haired? Does that go somewhat more exactly?" Vicki pressed on him. Eventually she had paid for more then a simple _I´ve seen him cuddling with a meal-on-legs._..

"Guess, such type Italian or so. Looked like that at least. The small one was making out with her after he had gotten them two drinks from the bar." He waved his hand midair. "That woman has...na, yup...been quite snogging with him. And when I watched over to her again occasionally, the small one had been sitting in the corner rather knocked over...But that´s none of my business what she´s doing with him as long as they won´t do that on the front bar..."

Vicki sighed, pulling a face and rolling with her eyes.

"Okay. Snogging. Have you seen when he left..."

"Uhm...was quite late in the night...When I passed by she was just about to drag him out. Man, that guy was drunk as a shunk. Seems, that small one can´t take much of a slosh...not like the tall one!" he directed to Mike again.

"Do you know the blonde?" Vicki hooked in on the point again. Mike in a club...uhm, rather not!

"Nope! But he looks more solid!" The door guard grinned.

"So ya serving alcohol by visual judgment, I suppose..." Vicki shot him an icy glance.

"That´s Steel Nail´s business." he directed with a thumb over to the bar, obviously he wanted to declare the barkeeper responsible for it.

"Steel Nail?" Vicki knitted her brows, putting her glasses down from her nose and she kneaded the base of her nose between her fingers. Slowly her eyes started to burn as she hadn´t slept since yesterday morning. "Who´s Steel Nail?"

"Our barkeeper! He got his name from screwing his shoulder in place with a titan screw after he kissed the lane with his Honda, down in Minneapolis..."

"Ouch!" Vicki meant.

"...he has helped her with shipping off the small one into his car outside."

"Where from do you know that exactly?Outside...it it has been his car?!"

"I held the door open. The woman doesn´t look as if she owns such a car. A mean...a Jaguar...? Steel Nail has stuffed him on the backseat and then she drove off..."

"Ah...and you don´t know...by pure chance...where she wanted to drive to!? Vicki took the photo from his hand.

"By pure chance...No! I won´t interrogate my guest, in difference to you! And she hasn´t given that away to me!"

"Okay, thank you. That´s all then." Vicki closed. She won´t get more useful information here. At least she knew that Henry had been accompanied by a mysterious woman and that he had been in a rather strange condition when they had left together. The woman had been driving his precious car and that at all was strange enough, as Henry was very restrictive with letting anybody else at the steering wheel of his car. Only once, after they had rescued him from Mendoza´s cellar, he had been willing in that Coreen would drive them. Mike was too weakened, she couldn´t see in the dark and Henry was suffering from the Jia-o-gulan poisoned blood...

Sometimes Vicki wished that she might be able to make people forget, that they had seen her...like Henry. For umpteen times today she noticed how much she was missing Henry yet already.

"You´re a cop, though. Ain´t you?" he shouted after her.

"No! Not anymore! Had I´ve been giving you any money then?!" She halfhearted waved to him and left the club. Outside she pulled her cell from her pocket to call Coreen.

"Did you find Henry?!" Coreen seemed to jump out of her shirt by expectation and excitement.

"Not Henry! But at least a trace of him...A woman has shipped him off the Night Sky on King Street. She had been driving his car, the bouncer said." Vicki informed her assistant without breathing.

"_She_ has been driving? _His_ Jag?" Coreen didn´t trust her ears.

"Yup, obviously! That guy meant, that Henry had been as drunk as a fish..."

"Henry and drunk? I think, he can´t..." Coreen didn´t know what to think of it. By her knowledge vampires couldn´t get drunk. But she couldn´t testify that theory. But that doesn´t look like Henry.

"That both of you...did you ever get plastered together, Coreen? I´ve not! I don´t know if and what he can cope with or rather not." Vicki shook her head. "We´ll drive to Mike. He shall search for the Jag. Per GPS or anything else!"

"Mike will be really enjoyed! Cause by now it´s a fact that here will be a Henry-search again!" Coreen groaned. Mike had been in a bad mood when he had left and to convince him now to give any support... wrong time at the wrong place!

"How did he say once?! Slowly Henry is becoming his personal nightmare! But when it comes to my partner, I don´t give a fuck about it, what Mike will be dreaming of!" Vicki growled low under her breath. "And when it´ll be a set of fangs, being at a place where they don´t belong to normally..."

"But! Miss Nelson!" Coreen criticized.

"Don´t act cute! Who´s constantly talking about, that you once wanna be bitten thoroughly by Henry? Henry isn´t a baby vampire anymore!" Vicki had to grin though.

"That´s called a newbie, Ms. Nelson! Newbie!" Coreen corrected her.

"Who?" Vicki absently stared at her cellphone, as a substitute for Coreen.

"Na, a childe! A newly turned vampire! That´s what is called a newbie, that´s from _to be new_ or newly born! Not...baby vampire! Henry would be going nuts, when he hears that!"

"I´m going nuts immediately, when we don´t find Henry soon!" Vicki moaned. "But then I won´t be all alone in going nuts at least! Let´s go, Coreen, we´ll met with Mike in the homicide. See ya soon!" Vicki hung up and shoved her clammy fingers in her jeans pockets, when she went to the next bus stop.

Heaven, she still had become so used to using either a cab or to be driven by Henry, that she let out a hiss, when she reached the bus stop and became aware, that she had to wait a couple of minutes for the next bus. Her frustration grew bigger, when she saw that the bus was crowded now by all these people, who were on their morning way to the job. Rush hour! Angrily she shoved her body in the bus...

_To be continued _


	3. Chapter 3 Darkest Day, Part One

**There´s sometimes more than you´re expecting **

_**Chapter 3 **_

**Darkest day, Part One**

The air in the room was dusty and moldy. There was no window in here and the single fluorescent tube was only spreading its light within a small range. Especially that range in which Henry was lying, lighting up a scene that might belong to a cheap crime movie.

His head was lying in a pool of blood, that had stuck his hair together and been running down his chest and down his throat in rivulets, drying on the ground finally. His body was lying in a position that was equal to that, which dead persons occupied, even when not in that way, which the living could impossibly be imitating.

His eyes were closed and Henry´s breath came slowly and in snatchy intakes. His lips were opened to a narrow slit and the four tips of his fangs were shimmering from under them. Building a stark contrast to the dark red of the blood, that had been running from the corners of his mouth and over his chin. The blood was way too dark in relation to his lips which yet were so pale that wasn´t common with him, normally.

To an ingenuous watcher, Henry had to appear to be dead.

_To sleep. Deep and dreamless. The sleep of the vampires._

_Henry could only feel a hard surface under him, his body felt sore and roughed up and deep within, the animal was gnawing at him with hungry teeth. He wasn´t moving, not because he didn´t want but simply because he was unable to, so he gave over to the silence and darkness under his eyelids. When the sleep would come, he would find calmness, waking up on the next evening and everything...the fish, the tunnel and that crappy dream of a woman in a dark club on King Street, who had attacked him with darkness and had ripped his head off his shoulders...would be dissolving into nothing when he would open his eyes for the next night._

_It had to be a dream_

_A dream of death._

This semblance of death yielded abruptly, when the lids with those long lashes opened jerkily and under them black eyes were appearing. So dark like the deepest night and with almost no more white of the eyeballs.

A scream came out of Henry´s throat.

He opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling and into the lamp above him and the light of it let the ceiling above disappear in dark shadows. To straighten up, to buckle...

But his body disobeyed. He even couldn´t lift up his head and the only things he was feeling, were the stinging pain in his spine bone, anywhere between the back of his head and his shoulders, and the pounding headache, which was booming in his head like a concrete mixer. Henry groaned, he wanted to touch his head in a reflex, in the hope to soothe his headache. But he couldn´t even curve his fingers. When he tensed his neck muscles, the pain in his neck sharpened to a sting and he gave up to lift his head.

Needle! Any friggin needle! She had driven a monster of a needle between his spine bones. The sight of it alone had been enough to cause a new wave of nausea swapping up in him, had let his heart cramp in panic, when she had been placing this perversion of a medical tool in front of his eyes. Just to make certain that no doubts would be rising in him, about what she was about to do with him.

Henry hadn´t much experience with instruments, but he had seen cannulas, when Dr. Mohadevan had set up infusions and injections on Vicki. But this was looking by its size, that it was rather thought for use on large animals than for humans. Vaguely he reminded that Vicki once had told him about punctures of the spine marrow and the risks connected with this procedure. Henry stated by this, that it would be better to stay lying motionless, instead of risking to damage any nerves in his neck spine. Obviously this needle was directly inserted into his neck´s spine channel, the spine marrow, what would be explaining why that stuff had been working immediately and so violently.

He could only remind that in the club he had suddenly felt the same, strong pain, before he couldn´t anything remember, anymore. Not of losing consciousness and the less that he had been brought to anywhere.

Maybe he was lying in any kind of cellar...

Once again a cellar.

His relation to cellars was slowly becoming a fraught one. Henry had never been a friend of narrow rooms, since he had spent three nights in a wooden coffin after the turning, before Christina could dig him up. In London he had a spacious sleeping compartment in the cellar of his house, before half the city had been fallen prey to the flames and he´d almost become its umpteenth victim.

He was in any house either in or outside of Toronto. Or merely one or a couple of floors beneath the club. He couldn´t neither remember that they had brought his body in here, into this dungeon, and thrown him on the ground. Nor how much time had went by between the attack on him in the club and his awakening...more a regaining of consciousness...in this room.

The air was stinking of blood. Fresh. Currently dried and the smell of it was firing up the rumbling of the animal within. His lips hurt and when he carefully moved his tongue over them, he tasted blood. By its taste it was his own. Henry knew that it won´t take long anymore until the rumbling of the animal within would be turning in a painful gnawing in his veins, when he won´t be able to feed soon. And the hunger would be stinging within him like with thousands of needles, to finally turn into a feeling of burning pain, as if his veins would be rolling inward.

_When he closed his eyes to open them again, he would be at home and Vicki would be with him and he might tell her about his strange dream...Night dream. Vampires don´t dream at daytime._

His hair was stuck together and all smelled of blood. So intensively that he was befogged in a red cloud. Red fog. Blood red fog wrapped around him. Adding another dimension to the hammering in his head, to the pounding sound. Anywhere outside there had to be a concrete mixer running. Please tell me, that this is a concrete mixer and not my head, he begged. But from afar he only heard the sound of running water , that was gurgling thru a tube, before it ebbed away.

Water.

Water won´t satisfy his hunger.

Blood.

_Good Lord, Vicki! I´ve had a terrible dream; of a woman and a club full of blackness. Black like the hell, black like the soul of Lord Astaroth. Darker than the night. So dark the night._

_Vampires don´t dream._

_It had to be the poison from the demon claws that was creating these fooling images in his mind. So hurting! Oh Vicki! His body was ablaze and her cool hand was at him. So soft. He would be able to fall asleep when she protected him._

The light from the fluorescent tube was burning in his eyes and he couldn´t move. His leg was hurting where she had kicked him. The damn light was even burning through his closed lids and the humming of the dim illumination was hanging in his sensitive hearing like the pounding in the back of his head. A sting when his neck muscles unintentionally tensed and the needle seemed to go deeper. Her finger had shoved that piece of steel deeper and deeper and his spine bone in the neck seemed to burst. Screaming. Heat. Screaming. He pressed his teeth together, until the tips of his fangs were piercing into his lower lip, his fangs were extended to their full length, because he had lost control by pain. His lips were hurting where he had bitten in the agony. Better to die than to have endure this burning pain any longer. Something was exploding into his brain, dissolving his body, burning its way thru his brain with the heat of the sun, before the blackness, that filled his throat, was suffocating him.

_Vicki, stay with me! Then I can sleep! Her cool hand was on his ripped chest, which was soothing the heat in his wounds that had been caused by Norman´s demon. Vicki, who had been with him, who had him put in his bed and was waking with him through the fever heat of the pain, until he might fall asleep. It was so gut to have her with him. Vicki...he would tell her about his dream when he would be awake and everything would be good again. All would become good again, when he would sleep yet. To wake up...and the world would be okay again..._

"Vicki...!"

A stertorous breathing. His scream was echoing in his ears, echoing from the silent, cold walls. Ebbing away and breaking at the walls until nothing was left over of it but the dark shadows beyond the dim light from above.

From afar he heard a rat peeping. A second rat answered to it, then it was silent again.

Silence...so silent that he meant to hear when the molecules of air were dancing their soundless dance with the dust, that was hanging in the air like an almost invisible fog.

Silence.

Silence.

When the door was opened, Henry twitched like waking up from deep sleep. He became aware that he couldn´t remind the last minutes?...hours?...or had it only been seconds, in which he had been kinda spacing out, drifting off like in sleep. Actually his brain seemed to switch off partially every once in a while. Slowly he lost the sense for time. Certainly that was coming from that stuff that was paralyzing his system. Partial, selective paralysis...

...as he found out, when the Tonia thing was suddenly appearing beside him and a blade was flashing in the air.

A shaving razor.

She bent over him and the blade was gliding through the tissue of his jeans, slashing the trouser legs on whole length until the halves were sinking down to the ground to the right and to the left, baring his legs. The cold air was biting in his naked skin, made his hair on his legs stand on end.

"I promised you to come back, Henry Fitzroy, and to take my time with you. Much time...You didn´t let my father much time. We´ll see how much time you´ll let _me_...!"

She bent deeper and the blade was coming nearer to his leg...

Outside the room, a mouse squeaked when a cat got on her. Then the cat jumped away with a sound between a snarl and a hissing, when the walls turned out to be not thick enough, to silence the noises that came from inside the stonework...

**Toronto Metropolitan Police – Homicide**

Completely unimpressed by the usual chaos in the foyer,Vicki and Coreen were heading for the office in which Mike Celluci, detective sergeant in the TMP homicide, was sitting at his desk. He was bent over his computer and lifted his head when two all too familiar figures entered his office. Coreen sank down on the next best chair, without asking for permission.

Vicki was towering over his desk, pushing both her hands on the table´s edge and her grayish-green eyes were staring in the blue ones of Mike.

"Hi, Vic..." Mike sounded tired as he didn´t have much sleep in this night. To be correct, he has had none! "What going on that you´re showing up here with the cavalry. I´m having four cases on the table and Crowley is hanging in my..."

"Henry has been kidnapped!" Four words only, but they were enough, to let Mike´s carefully protected world of normal criminal business disintegrate into nothing.

"Fuck!"

One word only, but it expressed more than a whole sentence, what Mike thought of it. By Mike´s look she couldn´t tell if he was frustrated, angrily or simply unbelieving. His next words were killing all doubts.

"How do you come up with this crazy idea, Vicki?" his cerulean eyes under the blonde strands of his hair looked at Vicki as if she lad lost her mind. "Had he been kidnapped by the big brother of this slime fish, that we have killed? That´s business of the fishing department. I have four cases of murder on my desk! Vic! Murder! Not any disappeared vampires! As far as I know Fitzroy, he´s hiding anywhere...Maybe he got somewhat late with his midnight snack and is waiting now for the next sunset." Like to give point to his words, he opened a file and attempted to read through it, in the vague hope, that this would be enough for Vicki and her assistant to turn around and leave his office.

When Mike looked up, she was still standing in front of him. Her hands were still lying on the table surface where she had them propped up. His view was boring into his eyes, her nose was only inches apart from his own. Mike groaned, tilted his head back and leaned back in his chair. He reached out with his hands.

"So...?!" he sighed in resignation.

"As always! When it´s about my partner, I´m thrown back on my own efforts again!" she growled right in front of Mike´s face. Mike shoved himself back. Vicki was staring at him like a wolf. And Mike asked himself what of vampire habit she already had adapted from Henry. With the difference that she couldn´t turn her eyes black. At all! Black eyes. His personal nightmare. Or not. A part of his body, that was definitely not his throat was reminding of a certain feeling...

Damn bastard! This vampire could be mixing up someone´s mind thoroughly. Resolutely he brought his southern areas under control again.

"Vicki, I don´t have much time. When you would please shortly explain to me, what you want from me!" he sounded wearily.

"Last night Henry went to a club on King Street..." Vicki began.

"Night Sky!" Coreen added.

"That isn´t unusual for him. Eventually he has to _eat_ and there´s nothing to get from me anymore..." Mike´s right hand moved up to the scar at his neck. "And in that mood in which he had been..."

"I´ve been waiting until after sunrise and then I and Coreen started to search for him. The bouncer of the _Night Sky_ has recognized him on the photo and has told me, that Henry had been sitting in a corner of the club, together with a woman..."

"Please spare me the details of his ingestion!" Mike grunted. Her middle finger was showing him what she was thinking of it, then she went on:

"He said that this woman had been dragging him out of the club after it. He had looked as being drunk as a skunk. The barkeeper had helped her to put Henry into his Jag."

"So, when Fitzroy is now driving drunk, then..." Mike grabbed for his drawer. That, in which he still had the Fitzroy file.

"I have never seen Henry being drunk, Mike!" Vicki protested.

"What doesn´t mean anything. Eventually he´s living some thirty decades longer than we. And when he had been feeding on someone who was sloshed...the err is human...uhm...vampir...ic. Crap, I´m already talking bopkus! So, what do you want from me, Vic?"

"Mike, you don´t honestly believe that Henry would allow it that anybody other than himself will drive his car...And..."

"Perhaps he once had been reasonable and had handled over the keys, when he got plastered... Guess he´s nailing down his intoxication anywhere. A vampire is a human only too."

"What cop-out are you even searching for, Mike, so you can keep your ass stuck to your chair to work through your stinking normal cases in reality." She smashed her fist on his desk, making his pencils jump in protest.

"Another search, Vicki? Listen! To lose another one and a half liter of blood is something I might not afford! You seemed to have forgotten how it had been ending up the last time, when we searched for Fitzroy."

"I´ve nothing forgotten! Really nothing at all1 And what I want from you: You have the possibility to search or to let search for a missing car. We know that Henry was seen in his Jaguar for the last time. When we´ll find the car, then we´ll know where he might be in an approximate range! Cause he couldn´t have gone far from it shortly before sunrise. Afoot or how so ever. Above all you can localize his cellphone, Mike!"

She leaned nearer to him.

"And how please, shall I...explain away...that, Vicki?! Like: I need a cellphone localization, cuz the vampire partner of my ex-colleague disappeared! There not only Crowley would feel for her head! She´s still having it in for me already cuz of was going on here before! I can´t constantly explain away the corpses of your partner, which he so..."

"Henry doesn´t let corpses lie around. Otherwise he still won´t be alive anymore..." Vicki protested.

"Living. Undead. Call it what ever you want. I can´t! I have..." Mike growled.

"Four cases on your desk! Ya still told me, Mike! Then I´ll even have to search for other help! Cuz I understand! You´re responsible for murder, not for missing persons! I´ve once again gotten it!" Vicki reached over the table, closed the file which Mike had been working on and then she turned around.

"Come on, Coreen! We´re going! Then we´ll search for any other help!"

Coreen stared at Mike and before she turned around to walk away with Vicki, she whispered to Mike: "Vicki owes her life to Henry! But it isn´t your life, Detective!" Her voice sounded of contempt and she turned on her heels and followed Vicki out of his office. The glass door fell shut behind her.

Mike stared after them, then he smashed the folder on his desk.

Down on the street Coreen asked: "Who do you want to beg for help, Ms. Nelson, when Mike doesn´t want to?" She was hurrying beside Vicki, who was running for the next crossroad, where a cab stopped right in the moment. When they were sitting in the cab, she finally got the desired answer.

"I´ll call Mick! Maybe he can help us. Eventually he´s a private eye and he had helped us with the Hell´s Dust case..."

"Mr. St. John? But he´s in Los Angeles and so far as I know...so, I don´t know if he can come up here. For sure he´s working on own cases currently..." Coreen gave back with a hint of depression in her voice.

"First of all he´s a vampire! And who might be better at finding a vampire than another vampire?!"

"You´re meaning something like...inner-species connections? But Mr. St. John...he...he belongs to another...species and..."

"Yes! And...? What and...? Coreen, he had investigated here once and..." Vicki interrupted her concerns.

"That once he had been...invited or...allowed! Henry had...what is his name, though? Talked to Augustus and as far as I know, he had assigned him a territory! And now, as Henry is missing, he can´t do such thing! When Mr. St. John is showing up here without permission, Henry flips out! Ya know, how territorial he is...!" Coreen shrugged with her shoulders in resignation.

"Coreen, I´m believing that to be Henry´s smallest concern in the moment! First we´ll have to learn more about this mysterious woman, whom he had seen with lastly. I have the very bad feeling, that she has to do with Henry´s disappearing!"

Vicki pulled her cellphone from her pocket, opened the phone book and searched for the number that Mick had given her, then she dialed. Impatiently she was waiting through the ringing. Crap! International call but at least on the same continent, she thought.

The phone was ringing.

Was ringing again. Probably Mick was still sleeping yet, she thought, but she decided to wait though. A mailbox didn´t switch on. Either he was busy otherwise... And Vicki didn´t want to define otherwise more correctly...or...

She tried to fight down her nervousness, almost accidentally cutting the connection with her slightly trembling fingers, when her call got finally answered... Hope, it´s not someone else taking up the call. Mick had a girlfriend or fiance. What was her name? Beth. Anything with Beth. Urgh, doesn´t matter!

The voice from the receiver was a man.

Vicki breathed with relief.

"Hi! You´re speaking with Mick St. John, private investigations! What can I do for you?" His voice was all business, kindly but professional. Obviously didn´t he recognize directly, who was calling and from where the call came, when he saw a Canadian area code.

_A calm voice, cool hands which were at her, holding her fever shaken body down with gentle force, while Henry tried to shot her anything against the pain. His voice had been the steady pole in the chaos of her fever fantasies. His experience with which he had helped Henry with her..._

"Hello! Who´´s there, please?!" the voice friendly repeated.

Vicki knitted her brows in an attempt to concentrate. Looks, like this will become at least another forty eight hours day, if not any worse... she thought shortly, before she answered finally.

"Sorry, it´s me! Vicki Nelson in Toronto, from Nelson Investigations...Mr. St. John...?"

"Hello Vicki! Nice, that you´re calling again. How are you? Did you recover well? I´ve seen you the last time during the trial...!" Lots of questions.

"I´m well again! There´s nothing to be seen anymore from the wound, thanks to Henry´s saliva..."

"Yeap, I remember that, He mentioned something like that. How´s Henry? I didn´t hear from him since longer..." Mick sounded honestly interested. Vicki reminded that both vampires had become something like friends in the end of the case. When there was anything like that between vampires. Eventually Henry was one of the territorial kind, in difference to Mick who was living in a kind of vampire community in L.A.

"Well, that the reason, why I´m calling you! I need your help, Mick! Henry is...since today´s morning he has disappeared, is missing...Lastly he had been seen with a woman, who shall have put him in his car. A bouncer said that he was drunk, but I don´t believe it! I even dunno, if something like that can happen to him..." Vicki sounded helplessly.

"What can happen? Be drinking too much?!" Mick smiled what Vicki couldn´t see but only hear from his voice. "I don´t know! I myself can cope with this and that, what isn´t blood! At least I had no opportunity to test that out together with Henry."

"Please, can you come over here to Toronto, Mick?! I don´t know if you´ll have time or if you´re working on an important case..." When Mick won´t have time, then she didn´t know whom she might ask for otherwise.

"What are you expecting from it, Vicki! Coincidentally I´ve just finished my last case." Mick heard from Vicki´s voice how tensed she was. Her heat was beating faster than normally.

"I´m hoping, honestly said, that you can find him! Henry never had not been home at sunrise. His home is especially designed for his safety urges. I´m afraid, that this woman has him..." he heard Vicki swallowing hard.

"That she has kidnapped him? Do you believe that he had been kidnapped? Do you have a clue, why? Has Henry any enemies?" Mick was playing through different scenarios in his mind.

"I don´t know. I´ve to spread it further on...Three weeks ago Henry had been held captive by someone, who had hunted him since centuries..." Vicki began.

"Another vampire?" Mick asked. Centuries normally meant another vampire, unless there might be other...immortal beings...out there. Henry had told him a lot about strange things, Mick had never ever heard of before, but in legends, movies and novels. But never in reality...

"No! He...was a human who had held himself alive with herbs and vampire blood, cause he was hunting vampires. He was after Henry, but we could rescue, free Henry and he has killed the man...And now it looks, as if Henry has been kidnapped. What this doorman told me, is so untypically for Henry, by all what I know about him until yet..."

Mick couldn´t exclude the possibility, that Henry had still secrets, which he hadn´t shared with Vicki. Out of good reason or why so ever. He had learned to know him as a kindly and honest man/vampire. He didn´t want to accuse him of anything, but maybe Henry was hiding any secrets to protect Vicki. Secrets which might endanger her or make her vulnerable to whose attack ever. Henry was extremely protective about Vicki, even when she was a tough and fearless woman. But centuries might open options, a human might never be expecting, simply by the lack of time one had been living through...

"What you´re having of information yet is rather vaguely..." he meant in a calm voice. He didn´t want to disappoint her, but...

"Isn´t it that ever, when we get started...?" Vicki replied nervously. Almost every case, in the police service and now in the P.I. business started on a vague base of information. Why else were they called in then?

"But I have time and I´ll take the next flight to Toronto. I´ve won a new friend in Henry. After all he is normally forced to take refuge from the sun. In difference to me! I´ll come to you and then we´ll see, if I can help you...and Henry...!" Mick heard Vicki breathe with relief.

"Thank you, Mick! I thank you!"

"I´ll be up there in a couple of hours, Vicki! Where do we meet?"

"In my office in the Huron Street. You´ve the address, I guess...?"

"Yup! I´ve been there once. Okay, Vicki. And...keep calm! Wait until I´m with you...! See you soon, Vicki!"

"Easier said than done, but whatsoever...Okay, see you soon, Mick!" Vicki sighed and let out an audible breath, when it clicked on the other end of the connection. She nodded to Coreen.

"He´ll come!"

Coreen breathed with relief too. "Then we´ll find Henry. Also without Mike!" she shook her head no. How only could Mike be so stubborn?

**Anywhere**

The room was lying in semidarkness.

Slowly Henry opened his eyes. In the first moment he couldn´t tell, if he had slept or if he had been unconsciously. It took some seconds until his eyes got used to the light from above, light from a fluorescent tube. He tried to ignore the annoying humming from that weak think.

The next thing he noticed, was the intensive smell of blood. Fresh blood. The hunger was exploding in him and he growled deeply. Then he groaned. Burning pain was running through his legs and without looking at, he knew that the smell of blood was coming from the cuts. Multiple incision she had...

His skin was feeling sticky and when he unsuccessfully tried to tense his leg muscles, he groaned out. Henry didn´t know how deep the wounds were, but they were deep enough to put any further attempts of _trying _to move to a hold. What painfully reminded him that he was unable to move at all! His breath was snarling hard and harshly in his ears.

_God, Vicki! Where...where are you...?_

To close the eyes. Sleeping.

To sleep! Good Lord, when he might even sleep. It was day outside, that she had told him with a devilish smirk.

_Unless you´re up to a burn off!_

The sheer thought of it let the panic rise in him. What if she would simply pull him outside in his paralyzed state, out into the sunlight? In his momentary state he didn´t have the slightest hint of a chance to get himself back into safety anyway, when he would be outside in the sunlight.

Definitely his death and she would it even find amusing to watch him helplessly being burned alive.

Henry was feeling when his heard cramped of fear in his chest.

_He had almost been burned up once, already. London 1666. The great Fire of London. _

_Pain was crawling upward from his legs, spreading over his whole body. His skin pulled to blisters, which burst, before the fire started to turn his flesh in festering wounds. Pain, unbearable agonizing pain. Blazing flames around him, at him. He screamed..._

Henry screamed in horror. His heart was racing in his chest and the cuts in his legs were hammering and throbbing in time with his heartbeat. In panic he teared his eyes open, unable to lift his head to look down on his legs. His nostrils were widening and full of fear he inhaled the air. The stench of burnt flesh...

It took him endless seconds until his senses were noticing the reality.

No burnt flesh.

All what he could smell was blood. Blood in a cloud of red fog. No burnt flesh! The memories of what he once had suffered, had fooling him in his fear with sounds and smells, which yet were past, not reality. He trembling asked himself, if he would slowly lose his mind, when his brain was fooling him with such hallucinations.

His eyes closed and he tried to bring his breath and his heartbeat under control. The throbbing in his legs was slowly subsiding, giving room to a burning sensation. Henry breathed in and out. His breath was hissing in his ears and his neck hurt. A throbbing was spreading in his temples, spreading as far as behind his eyes. Henry tried to breathe into his belly to lead his body awareness to other areas of his body.

He was afraid, that when he yet might get this stinging headache again, from whatsoever, then the nausea would return. Headache, dizziness and nausea. He knew what a concussion was, by principle. She had hammered his head on the ground. Quite possible that he had a concussion. His body should be able to heal that relatively fast. When he would have enough blood in his system. Or when he might drink. When.

But he had thrown up the last bit of blood, which he still had in his body under the pain and the nausea. And the whatsoever, that she may have shot him, was turning his whole system upside down, keeping him from sleeping, paralyzing his limbs, turning him into a helpless bundle of skin, bones, tendons and muscles. Like a string-puppet whose strings had been cut.

Like this someone had to be feeling with a paraplegia.

In his helplessness and rage he started to scream.

But it was nobody there who might hear him. Only the silent walls around him were throwing back his screams. The thought of it, that nobody reacted to his screams, and may it only be to shout at him that he should finally shut up, was firing up his rage even more.

Finally he gave up when he felt fresh blood on his lips, where the skin had been ripped open by his own fangs. He gasped, cawed when his throat started to hurt and he fell silent. Staring at the ceiling above him with burning eyes. Henry closed his lids, feeling the tears running down his cheeks, hot and salty. And he couldn´t even wipe them off. He pressed his lids together and then he opened them again.

When he looked up again, he noticed that the light of the lamp wasn´t shining directly into his eyes anymore. Obviously he had been moved to another place in the room. Henry couldn´t remind that somebody had moved him, but his head wasn´t lying in that pool of clotted blood. When the woman had attacked him with the knife, he had been lying under the lamp. No more after it. By that he suggested, that he either had passed out or he had been unconsciously, when she had him dragged over a short distance. Either he had been beaten up or he had passed out by pain.

Henry tried to get the things in a reasonable row. Because as long as he was able to think reasonably, he won´t lose his mind. As long as he could think halfway clearly, he saw a chance to do anything, to get him out of here.

Except for this miserable headache. As long as he wouldn´t get blood, that wouldn´t get any better.

**Vicki´s office, Huron Street**

Vicki was deep in her concerns and twitched, when her door bell rang. She took a deep breath and opened the door which she had locked up, against her common habits.

Two men were standing outside the door. One of them she had been expecting; Mick St. John. But not the other one whom she didn´t know. That guy was smaller than Mick and looked younger, pretty young. He looked more an even matured adult and he smiled boldly.

"Hi! You´re Ms. Nelson?"

"Yes." she turned to St. John. "I´m glad that you´re here, Mick!" Vicki looked at Mick, deliberately avoiding the view of the stranger at his side. Who was that guy? For sure not the cab driver, unless Mick had run out of Canadian Dollars and the cab´s e-cashier was out of service...

She directed to Mick´s companion. She would have to pay St. John. And she wasn´t up to pay for somebody else. Her financial means were limited. Another point Mike had warned her about: that she should rather turn her services to the rich, than to investigate for the homeless or those with little money.

"Who is your companion?" she asked, with skepticism in her voice and view.

"A friend of mine. Logan Griffen. He helps me and is an expert in everything what has to do with computer and IT. Excuse me, Vicki, that I didn´t inform you, that somebody will accompany me..."

"I´ve told it you! You should have announced me! Now Ms. Nelson is peeved.." Logan shot Mick a broad grin.

"I´m not peeved, Mr. Griffen! Only surprised." Vicki countered. "I didn´t count with companionship!"

"She´s afraid that she´ll have to line my pockets additionally!" Logan whispered in Mick´s ear in such a low voice that only Mick could hear it, who now shook his head. Vicki looked skeptically at Logan, her view moved over his face, registering details in his features in common habit. A bit pale, like St. John. Vampire? Possibly, her brain said.

"Mr. Griffen is...he´s one of your...kind?" she directed to Logan, giving him a hint of a smile.

"Where from?" Logan whispered.

"Ms. Nelson works together with a vampire. She recognizes a vampire when she sees one..." Mick smiled.

"Not. Good." Logan mumbled.

Vicki directed to her hallway: "Must...will I have to beg you in?" Her hand waved through the air like in a formal bow.

"No, Ms. Nelson! I...we aren´t subject to these...these old-fashioned regulations!" Logan smiled broadly.

"Well, you are belonging to another species than Henry. Then I prefer to ask, before...you´ll get problems..." Vicki shot him an excusing smile.

"What problems does she mean?" Logan asked Mick.

"Well, she´s afraid, that you won´t be able to enter or that you probably would dissolve in smoke in her office, when you hadn´t been officially invited in..." Mick had to smile at the thought too. Logan was a guy of the modern times, but he was so mixed up in music and his computer stuff, that he seemed to miss some of the TV shows. Otherwise he wouldn´t have wondered about her question.

Vicki waved both men in and locked u, the door behind them, so they would be undisturbed. In the office she introduced Logan Griffen to Coreen.

"Coreen Fennel, my assistant..."

"Hello! I´m helping Ms. Nelson with the office and I´m doing paranormal research too! I had occultism classes at the University of Toronto..." Coreen started, before she went on without restraints; "You´re in computer? IT? That whole stuff. Hacking?" She was acting completely unbiasedly. Vicki shot her a skeptical view but kept silent. "Whoa! Then we´ll find Henry very fast. By all means faster than with the help of Detective Michael Celluci!" Coreen added.

"Gee, let´s say, I´ve some advanced experience with computers and IT..." Logan smiled.

Mick bent over to Coreen, whispering in a conspiratorial voice while he directed to Logan with his thumb: "He´s a hacker! But don´t tell anybody else!" Mick smirked slightly.

"Okay, peeps! After we cleared that all up, let´s get started, I think!" Vicki interrupted them and directed to the chairs at her desk. Mick nodded in agreement and pulled his laptop from his bag.

"I´ll do notes, that will help me to sort that and in making conclusions...Please tell us, what you know until now, Ms. Nelson."

Vicki repeated what she had already told him on phone.

"Okay, then first of all we should try to find out who this woman is, who was seen last with Henry. After what you told me, Vicki, she´s all but a noninvolved witness or only a helpful acquaintance, who does a drunk man a favor by driving him home after a nice evening in a club."

"Can you take that over, Mick? I can´t ask the doorman again as this would be too suspicious. Perhaps you´ll have better luck and he doesn´t know you!"

In all these long hours, when she had been waiting for St. John, Vicki had already been brooding over the fact that she might not be able to go forward all alone. The waiting and the fact to be reduced to inaction they were forced to, had been gnawing at her nerves and the more at her conscience. To wait hours and hours for help...

And probably Henry was...hold captive anywhere. Locked in by whom so ever. Good Lord, he had gone thru all this some three weeks ago: to be locked in, hold captive, tied...Delivered to the hands of a lunatic, who indulged in his vengefulness throughout the centuries. Tortured...her throat constricted at the thought of it.

Sure! Henry was living not even invulnerably as a vampire. But because he had gotten involved with the forces of hell, additionally to his vampire existence, he was endangered double constantly. Humans and dark forces were threatening him, hunting him in an attempt to kill him. Where of humans were the smaller amount of potential enemies, because Henry was very careful not to cause unwelcome attraction.

But when somebody in the duty of Astaroth...?!

The whole waiting and the growing fear for Henry, who might be in the Lord-knew-what danger, had been rattling at her nerves, so that she finally had been wandering like a furious tigress through her home and office. And even Coreen hadn´t been able to calm her down. Every couple of minutes she had been looking on her clock, calculating how much time St. John would need to her office after his direct flight from L.A.

"Sorry...I have to ask you this; You didn´t get any...uhm... ransom demand of any kind so ever?!" Mick looked into her grayish-green eyes, inconspicuously searching in them for any uncertainty. Any indication that would show him, that she was holding back information.

"No! When this would be a normal kidnapping because anybody is in for Henry´s money, he or she would certainly...no, definitely...have gotten in touch with us...!"

"Okay, Vicki, I trust you! But I´m gonna need all of information that you can give me! Even such you´re thinking of to be irrelevant, or they not be related to this case...Please think of it thoroughly, Vicki! Take your time with it! Has Henry made any indication? Has talked about...enemies? Did he mention any threats, which were given off by whomsoever?"

"No! None I´m knowing of. Last evening we...I know this might sound crazy to you, Mick...we have killed a gigantic fish in the rainwater drain down at Lake Ontario, that had been haunting the whole area!"

"You should have seen it, Mr. St. John! Such a beast..." Coreen were moving through the air, indicating a size that reached beyond half the office, even for that monster fish slightly oversized.

"It´s all good, Coreen! It hadn´t been that large and I don´t believe that Mr. St. John..." Vicki waved off.

"It´s okay, Vicki!" Mick smiled and Logan bent nearer; "Tell me, what are these peeps actually doing...?"

"They are hunting animalistic, human and inhuman threats, Logan! Mr. Fitzroy is a real expert in it." Mick explained to him.

"That´s calming me down _tremendously_, Mick!" Logan gave a dry comment and decided to keep the book shelves in sight. Just in case some books would suddenly decide to develop a life of their own, hovering through the room...

Building up artistic piles.

Like in _Ghostbusters._

Vicki´s voice brought him back to reality. But what meant reality? Everything is relatively, says Einstein, Logan thought with a grin.

"So we killed this giant fish. A hagfish. Had been a real mess! In any case we´ve gone to Henry´s home for showering there. Mike´s clothes had been in such a sticky mess, that Coreen had to get him clean ones from his home and so Mike and I have been at Henry´s home until the morning. We talked a lot about what had happened over the last weeks and then Henry left, to get something...uhm...to get some food, before the sun rises. He hadn´t been in the best mode too, I have to confess. The discussion with Detective Celluci, Mike, about the events three weeks ago, had been an...uhm...unedifying one!" Vicki tried to circumscribe the situation.

"Which events, Vicki?" Mick got more attentively. No suspect, only attention.

"Mike has nothing to do with it!" Vicki immediately defended the absent detective and ex-partner.

"When it comes to Henry´s disappearance, you mean...?!"

"Yup! By the way...Mike has...he has supposed, I might be endangered by my partnership with Henry! Ya know what! This whole vampire-hits-on-a-woman thing, to finally drain me...suck me dry! Mike didn´t have any clue of makes Henry tick, he only knows these crap cliches from the movies and he thought, that he must protect me from Henry. And this moronic priest Mendoza has encouraged him in it! At all it was ending up with this priest getting his hands on Henry, just to do nothing else than to destroy him in best Van Helsing manner. With Delphine, another vampiress, he still had managed it before, as we had to find out..."

Vicki stopped for a moment, then she went on.

"This asshole had pooped so thoroughly into Mike´s brain, that Mike had seen himself verified in his irrational fear. Henry almost had been...I and Mike, we have found him in the last moment, before this mad vampire hunter could have burnt him up in sunrise. Henry was...he was severely hurt. This Mendoza had...tortured him and Henry...hm, well you can perhaps understand that, as a vampire I mean...Henry has bitten Mike, cause he had been totally starved out. Guess you can imagine, what Mike thinks of it, how he sticks by it. And yesterday evening everything came up to talk. After it, Henry left. He was pretty pissed off. He has been discussing that out with me too. And now he´s gone! Oh damn it! But Mike doesn´t have anything to do with Henry´s disappearance! Of that I´m convinced!" Vicki reassured.

Just to be safe.

Mick nodded while he typed everything into the file on his laptop:

"Is it possible, that this Mendoza holds him captive again? Ambushing him anywhere on the way?

"No! Mendoza is dead! Henry has...he has killed him. Don´t like to say so, but so it is..."

"I´m understanding, Vicki! So this Mendoza is off the rope as a repeat offender."

_To be continued_


End file.
